Year End Awards

I am troubled that we forget the pioneers of our sport, which is why I have decided to instill new interest in these awards and increase their relative importance. Each year, we will award the Ed Johnson Memorial Cup for the XP Horseman of the Year.. We will also award the Wendell Robie Trophy to the XP Horse of the Year.

The Duck, along with the XP Board of Directors will decide the winners in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This will be done much like the way that the National College Football champions are selected. Not perfect, but undoubtedly no worse than any of the National Championships that AERC has come up over the years. If, along the way, we find a better way to do it, we will.

EDWARD E. JOHNSON

Ed first became known to the endurance world when he won the Tevis Cup in 1965. Riding the magnificent chestnut stallion, Bezetal, he won the event in less than eleven and a half hours, bettering the previous record by more than three hours. Ed and Bez also won and set records on the Feather River Downriver Race and the Jim Shoulders Hundred Mile Race in Oklahoma. Ed and Bez won the Tevis again and was named Endurance Horse of the Year in 1967, but just winning wasn’t what Ed was about.

To any who were fortunate enough to have seen them in action, this horse and rider team embodied perfection. Few realize that the picture of Ed and Bez, with his hand on his thigh and the hackamore rope neatly coiled on the saddle, was not a posed picture, but was taken in natural light as he rode near No Hands Bridge on his way to winning the Tevis. The balance and symmetry exhibited were truly poetry in motion. Ed was the finest horseman that most if not all of us ever had the honor of knowing. His skills at communicating with horses were evident long before Monty Roberts and Robert Redford made talking with horses a household topic. Ed Johnson left behind a legacy of excellence that all of us should strive for. May his memory live forever in the hoofbeats of his horses.

The Duck, along with the XP Board of Directors will decide the winners in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This will be done much like the way that the National College Football champions are selected. Not perfect, but undoubtedly no worse than any of the National Championships that AERC has come up over the years. If, along the way, we find a better way to do it, we will.

EDWARD E. JOHNSON

Ed first became known to the endurance world when he won the Tevis Cup in 1965. Riding the magnificent chestnut stallion, Bezetal, he won the event in less than eleven and a half hours, bettering the previous record by more than three hours. Ed and Bez also won and set records on the Feather River Downriver Race and the Jim Shoulders Hundred Mile Race in Oklahoma. Ed and Bez won the Tevis again and was named Endurance Horse of the Year in 1967, but just winning wasn’t what Ed was about.

To any who were fortunate enough to have seen them in action, this horse and rider team embodied perfection. Few realize that the picture of Ed and Bez, with his hand on his thigh and the hackamore rope neatly coiled on the saddle, was not a posed picture, but was taken in natural light as he rode near No Hands Bridge on his way to winning the Tevis. The balance and symmetry exhibited were truly poetry in motion. Ed was the finest horseman that most if not all of us ever had the honor of knowing. His skills at communicating with horses were evident long before Monty Roberts and Robert Redford made talking with horses a household topic. Ed Johnson left behind a legacy of excellence that all of us should strive for. May his memory live forever in the hoofbeats of his horses.

WENDELL T. ROBIE

Wendell Robie was a lumberman from Auburn California who revived an old sport when he challenged a friend from Nevada to a “little ride over Sierras” Wendell claimed that he could ride one of his beloved Arabians from Lake Tahoe to Auburn in a day. One summer morning in 1955, when the full moon was shining bright, Wendell led a group of friends out of Tahoe City on a ride that was destined to become the keystone of modern endurance rides. Wendell was the Tevis Cup and for years he nurtured it. There is no question that the Tevis was responsible for making the modern sport of endurance riding what it is today. Without Wendell’s authoritarian leadership there is no question that our sport would have never gotten off the ground. In the early years when humane societies and government agencies were trying hard to close this event down, no one but Wendell Robie would have been able to keep going. We owe our sport to his efforts